Former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has died of Covid-19 complications despite his full vaccinated against the virus, his family has announced.
“General Colin L. Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, passed away this morning due to complications from Covid-19,” the Powell family wrote on Facebook on Monday afternoon, October 18 said.
“We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American,” they said, noting he was fully vaccinated.
“We want to thank the medical staff… for their caring treatment,” it added.
He was a former top military officer who rose to become the first African-American secretary of state in 2001 under former US president, George W Bush.
Aged 84, he served in the US-Vietnam war, an experience that later helped define his own military and political strategies as he became a trusted military adviser to a number of leading US politicians.
His national popularity soared in the aftermath of the US-led coalition victory during the Gulf War, but his reputation would be forever stained when, as George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, he pushed faulty intelligence before the United Nations to advocate for the Iraq War, claiming the country was developing weapons of mass destructions, an allegation that was proven false after the US led invasion of Iraq.
Born Colin Luther Powell on April 5, 1937, in Harlem, New York, Powell was the son of Jamaican immigrants Luther and Maud Powell.
He was raised in the South Bronx and educated in the New York City public schools, graduating from Morris High School in 1954 without any definite plans for where he wanted to go in life.
It was at City College of New York, where Powell studied geology, that he found his calling — in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). He soon became commander of his unit. This experience set him on a military career and gave him structure and direction in his life.
After graduation in 1958, Powell was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.
While stationed at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, Colin Powell met Alma Vivian Johnson of Birmingham, Alabama, and they married in 1962. The couple has three children: son Michael, and daughters Linda and Annemarie.
